The Kwikset House

1951

In 1951, the Kwikset Lock Company of Anaheim, California, commissioned the Eames Office to design a low-cost, prefabricated house. Charles and Ray planned to construct it with off-the-shelf parts and hardware. This would allow Kwikset to manufacture the house in quantity and sell it as a kit.

The Eameses proposed a one-story house, modular in plan, with a curved plywood roof and exposed beams. The interior had an open plan with a large living room that opened out onto a garden.

The office constructed a one-inch scale model of the house furnished with miniature Eames furniture, but soon after that, the Kwikset Company changed hands.

Although Charles and Ray’s plan met the company’s conditions, a prototype house was never built. A few years later, however, Charles and Ray designed the De Pree House in the same spirit of economical construction as the project for Kwikset.